Iraqi women, among Mideast's most educated, fear for the future

ELLEN KNICKMEYERAssociated Press

Published Wednesday, May 07, 2003

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Salwa al-Baghdadi, Shiite Muslim and newly practicing dentist, peers through the iron fence around her clinic. Her hands are thrust into the pockets of her white lab coat. Her brown hair is uncovered.

On the street outside, people shout and loudspeakers squawk -- the din of Muslim men marching past by the thousands, demanding a strong role for religion in the new Iraq.

With the fall of Saddam Hussein, al-Baghdadi, 23, says the future has never looked more hopeful. She speaks optimistically, like many young Iraqi women just old enough to be resentful but not broken by hardships and discrimination under Saddam.

On the other hand, al-Baghdadi concedes, a fear threatens to crush any hope: that men like the thousands marching outside will bring an extremist state -- one that forces Iraqi women, among the region's most educated, to retreat to their homes.

Iraqi women, closer to equality than their counterparts in many neighboring countries, have an enormous amount to lose in a future Iraq.

Across the country, particularly in strongholds of the majority Shiite Muslim sect like Najaf and Karbala, calls are rising for Iraq to become an Islamic state. That would mean sharia, or Muslim law, would be implemented, and it has been interpreted in many nations as significantly curtailing women's roles in public life.

In a country whose male population has been winnowed by wars, women make up at least 55 percent of the population. Iraqi women routinely study for up to two decades, taking professional jobs ranging from engineering to teaching to medical care.

Saddam's regime went through the motions of equality. Girls went to Baath Party gun-training camps. Women held high posts in the party and government.

Recent years, though, saw increasing dips in the seemingly level ground for women. Saddam catered more and more to Islamic fundamentalists as wars, sanctions and corruption eroded Iraq's middle class and as the Iraqi leader courted support from the religious establishment and traditionalist tribes.

Professional women said Saddam's power structure shut them out: Young men with lower test scores beat out women for prize slots in universities. Harassment made it impossible for many women to hold a department-head position.

"I lost my self-confidence," Sahar, a 39-year-old ex-engineer with sad eyes and wispy hair, said from the refuge of her family's walled yard.

Sahar, who spoke on condition her last name not be used, quit work in 1995, driven out by pressure to take bribes and harassment by male colleagues.

"It's so difficult now for me even to think of looking for another job," she said.

Now, like many Iraqis, she and her husband yearn to take their 13-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son out of Iraq, to escape the lawlessness and prospect of fundamentalist religious rule.

"What concerns me these days is how to get out of here," says Sahar, whose family, as Christians, has added distrust of any Islamic state. "We have to leave."